Police officers seek split from campus control

Lee Scrivner

Thursday, June 1, 2000 | 10:43 a.m.

If student justice is to be fair, then Nevada's campus cops have to have new bosses, a state panel was told Wednesday.

"We want to get ... a more nonbiased authority," University of Nevada, Reno, Police Sgt. Marc Conley said. "Athletes seem to get out of trouble much easier when police serve under the university."

Conley was among a group of university police officers who addressed a committee appointed by the governor to study a split of the state Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety. The officers asked to be removed from university controls and to be placed in the proposed new Department of Public Safety.

Police sergeants from both UNLV and UNR argued that operating under the state Department of Public Safety would benefit them in other ways, providing more opportunity for advancement and a stronger voice in the state Legislature.

But American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada Executive Director Gary Peck said the proposal has little support except from campus police.

"There is opposition to this proposal from within the university community and the community at large, and it is broad and deep," Peck said. "The only people in favor of the proposal are the police officers and their association."

Rebecca Mills, UNLV's interim vice president of Student Services, whose department currently includes the UNLV Police Department, said strained relations between campus police and the university administration and students would only be aggravated by the move.

"We want the campus police to be able to strongly identify with the campus community, and that happens best when they are members of that community as employees," Mills said.

The strained relations stem from several allegations of misconduct by university police. The latest occurred March 9 during a drug raid on a UNLV dormitory, which led to allegations of abuse and a state investigation.

Three dorm residents who requested the raid testified that the university administration had been indifferent for months to their complaints of drug use on their floor.

"The administration ignored the students' request to get the police involved," said UNLV Police Sgt. Paul Harris, who was placed on administrative leave following his involvement in the raid. "They wanted to deny the drug activity. There was a cover-up."

Even Joey Cohen, founder of the ACLU student chapter at UNLV and an opponent of the proposed police move, agreed the administration could have done more to alleviate the problem.

"I want to make it clear that the university administration holds a lot of responsibility to the students who complained," he said. "It is obvious that the administration failed them repeatedly."

But Cohen said that changing the whole system is not the answer, and that the students' grievances could have been addressed through other university channels, had the students been aware of them.

"They should have voiced their concern to the Public Safety Advisory Board, which makes safety recommendations to the president of the university on how to deal with safety issues." Cohen said.

Incoming DMV Director Richard Kirkland asked Mills to write a full report on the administration's handling of the students' request for police involvement in the drug raid.